Friday, October 30, 2009

There are certain images from the historic October of 2004 that can never be forgotten. Curt Schilling's bloody sock, Johnny Damon's grand slam, David Ortiz's walk-offs, Keith Foulke's final flip to Doug Mientkiewicz.

But between those lasting impressions is one that may have made the biggest impact in ensuring those memories would be cherished, rather than reminders of more heartbreak, like so many moments of Red Sox past.

The reason may be because it wasn't a moment at all -- it was a completegame.

The opening game of the World Series on Oct. 23, 2004, featured the high-powered St. Louis Cardinals coming into Boston, where the Red Sox were fresh off the most unbelievable comeback in baseball history.

What transpired at Fenway Park on a night when temperatures dipped into the low 40s was an instant -- yet largely forgotten -- classic.

Both teams were victims of lengthy seven-game series, resulting in the unorthodox Game 1 pitching matchup of Tim Wakefield and Woody Williams. Neither made it through four innings, and neither was very good.

Ortiz, who had already established himself as a postseason legend in the two weeks previous, stepped into the batter's box in the bottom of the first inning and launched a bomb high over Pesky's Pole. Whether it was fair or foul was hard to tell, but Ortiz circled the bases, giving the Red Sox a 3-0 lead in the process.

The Red Sox had picked up right where they left off, and things seemed to be going according to plan. An RBI single from Bill Mueller later in the inning only drove that point home further.

Shortly after, all hell broke loose.

Larry Walker homered to begin his 4-for-5 night, chipping away at the lead. But the Red Sox knocked Williams out of the game in the bottom of the third. Through three frames, the Red Sox held a 7-2 lead and only needed Wakefield to get through six innings with minimal damage to guarantee a win.

That much, Wakefield could not do. He walked the bases loaded in the fourth and gave up three runs, though one was due to Kevin Millar's inexplicable wild throw to third. After his fourth walk of the inning, Wakefield was lifted in favor of Bronson Arroyo, who escaped the fourth without further damage.

Red Sox 7, Cardinals 5.

All was calm for a couple of innings until the error bug hit the Red Sox again. Arroyo was cruising when So Taguchi chopped a grounder down the third-base line for an infield single. Arroyo, who had retired the last six batters at that point, tried to turn an impossible play and launched a throw well wide of first base, putting Taguchi into scoring position. Two batters later, the game was tied.

Though it's hard to remember now, the feeling in Boston at that moment was close to panic. So many times, for eight decades, the Red Sox had thrown away opportunity after opportunity. Fenway's excitement over hosting a World Series game for the first time in 18 years was muted harshly by the Cardinals' comeback.

St. Louis had been the best team in baseball all year, winning 105 games and featuring a potent lineup with Walker, Albert Pujols, Jim Edmonds, Edgar Renteria and Scott Rolen. The pitching staff was also incredibly deep. Jeff Suppan, Chris Carpenter, Jason Marquis and Matt Morris all won 15 games or more, and Jason Isringhausen converted 47 save opportunities.

The Cardinals were scary. After six innings of heart-wrenching baseball, St. Louis was even scarier.

But while fans may have feared the Cardinals, it was clear the Red Sox didn't. Manny Ramirez got Boston back on top with an RBI single in the seventh, and Ortiz ripped a hot shot that caught second baseman Tony Womack in the clavicle. Another run crossed the plate, and the Red Sox held a two-run lead with just two innings remaining.

Terry Francona sent in a pair of defensive replacements -- Mientkiewicz to first, Gabe Kapler to right -- but it turned out to be one too few. With two outs and a runner on, Renteria singled to left. Ramirez misplayed the ball, allowing Marquis (who entered the game as a pinch runner) to score.

In came lights-out closer Keith Foulke. He got Walker to hit a low liner to left field, but Manny misplayed his sliding catch attempt, allowing the tying run to cross the plate.

And once again, the feeling of impending doom set in throughout Fenway.

Foulke then intentionally walked Pujols to load the bases with one out. With the game on the line, Foulke induced a Rolen popup before sitting Edmonds down with a fastball on the inside corner.

With Dave Roberts -- the ALCS hero from Games 4 and 5 -- on the bench, it's easy to say those plays would have been made if he'd been a defensive replacement. But given the back-and-forth nature of the game, Francona could not risk taking his best bat in Ramirez out of the lineup.

So with the stage set for either a dramatic win or a devastating loss, the Red Sox needed one of their big boppers to step up.

Or their soft-hitting second baseman.

But before that could happen, the Cardinals returned the favors of Ramirez with an error of their own. Edgar Renteria couldn't handle a routine groundball off the bat of Jason Varitek, and instead of a two-out, bases-empty situation, Julian Tavarez had to face Mark Bellhorn with arunner on base.

Just a week earlier, Bellhorn had been booed in Boston for being mired in a horrific slump and looking lost at the plate. Fans shouted at Francona to play Pokey Reese, if for no reason than his spectacular defense. But Francona stuck with his man, who eventually hit crucial home runs in Games 6 and 7 at Yankee Stadium.

So when Bellhorn strode to the box for his eighth-inning at-bat, his confidence couldn't have been much higher. Tavarez, on the other hand, surrendered a pair of homers in the NLCS and broke his hand afterward in a fist fight with a dugout telephone.

With the two men in the same infield yet in completely separate worlds, Tavarez got ahead 0-2. Bellhorn was as patient a batter as Boston had ever seen, but his at-bats ended with a called third strike much too often for anyone to believe this one would end any differently.

Naturally, everyone's thought process went to the ninth. Johnny Damon and Orlando Cabrera were due up, with Manny and Ortiz set to follow. If Foulke could just gut out another inning, Ortiz would be able to add to his postseason heroics with another walk-off. Just one more inning.

But, of course, that wasn't necessary.

Bellhorn applied his short stroke to an 80-mph breaking ball over the heart of the plate and launched a ball down the right-field line. Boston froze as Bellhorn slowly trotted toward first, leaning ever so slightly to his left.

Unlike Ortiz's first-inning blast, no umpire was necessary for this one, as the ball hit squarely off the foul pole. When the ball bounced back onto the warning track and the ring of the pole resounded throughout the park, Fenway erupted, once again believing the World Series belonged to Boston.

Instantly, there were thoughts of Carlton Fisk's legendary homer in 1975. Bellhorn refrained from the waving and the jumping, but it turned out to be an even more important home run in Red Sox history.

What Bellhorn -- and later Foulke, who as Boston's postseason pitching MVP struck out Roger Cedeno to end the game -- accomplished was, in the strictest sense, win one baseball game. But the significance of that one win can't be understated.

One win for the Cardinals, and the tables would have been turned. Conversely, one loss for the Red Sox, and the nerves of New England would be on edge.

Thanks to Bellhorn's home run, the world -- or at least the World Series -- was saved. The rest of the series seemed elementary, with the Red Sox winning 6-2 in Game 2, 4-1 in Game 3 and 3-0 in the series clincher.

It's been easy over the last five years to look back and say that there's nobody that could have beaten that Red Sox team, that destiny was on their side, that fate and fate alone determined that World Series.

Maybe it was fate, but if the Cardinals had taken Game 1, would history have been different?

Friday, October 16, 2009

Jody Reed never walked off the field with his head bowed in shame, bearing the crushing disappointment of a Dodger crowd robbed of glory.

But Reed deserves a place right beside Mickey Owen, Ralph Branca, Terry Forster and Tom Niedenfuer in the Dodger Chamber of Horrors. The sickening cringe engendered by the memory of Forster serving up Joe Morgan's home run in 1982 or Niedenfuer tossing Jack Clark's in 1985 is every bit as applicable if you truly understand the mischief of Jody Reed. The difference with Reed is that his catastrophe came not in the hothouse mania of October but the cool epilogue of November.

Branca cost the Dodgers a pennant. Owen cost them a World Series.

Reed cost the Dodgers Pedro Martinez. No, he wasn't traded for Martinez. He cost them Martinez, as simply and horribly as a slow roller through the legs with the title on the line.

"Get Used to Disappointment"

A 5-foot-9, 165-pound second baseman who came up with Boston in 1987, Reed was an accomplished fielder and a capable hitter, with a career batting average of .270 and three seasons of more than 40 doubles. Playing in Fenway Park boosted those mainstream stats, but even using more sophisticated metrics, Reed was better than average in his first three full seasons, with OPS+ marks of 110, 113 and 109 (100 being average), followed by a 99 in his fourth season, 1991.

The decline in Reed's offensive value sharpened in 1992, the year he turned 30. His OPS+ fell to 75. Thanks to his fielding, though, Reed remained an above-average second baseman. He was no all-around great like Roberto Alomar or Lou Whitaker, but he was what he was: in the good sense, a second baseman second class.

Meanwhile, class was completely out for the Dodgers in '92. Oh, 86 consecutive seasons without finishing in last place was easy enough, but 87 was apparently too much to ask. Having come with a game of winning the National League West in 1991, the Dodgers cratered the following season, falling to 63-99.

The Dodgers had started the campaign 9-13, three games behind San Diego, when a jury acquitted four policemen in the beating of Rodney King on April 29. Following four days of postponements, the Dodgers lost seven of nine. They rallied to 23-23 in May, then buried themselves in last place for good with a 10-game losing streak in June. They finished 35 games behind Atlanta.

Things could have been worse on the mound, which featured two stalwarts - Orel Hershiser and Ramon Martinez - along with Tom Candiotti, Kevin Gross and Bob Ojeda. Pedro Astacio came up from the minors and threw four shutouts in 11 starts, finishing with an ERA of 1.98. No Dodger starter had an ERA over 4.00. None had a winning record, either.

That was because in the process of a wardrobe change with the on-field lineup, the Dodgers were caught undressed. Mike Scioscia finished his final full season with an OPS of .548 and EQA of .230. Jose Offerman finished his first full season with an EQA of .261 and 42 errors. Classmate Dave Hansen had an OPS of .585 and an EQA of .231 as the regular third baseman. Intended saviors-in-the-outfield Eric Davis and Darryl Strawberry combined for only 119 games. First baseman Eric Karros won the Rookie of the Year award, but his 20 home runs and 30 doubles masked other deficiencies - his EQA was .271. Only 35-year-old centerfielder Brett Butler posted an EQA over .300 or an OPS over .800.

At second base, the Dodgers platooned Lenny Harris and Mike Sharperson. Harris' EQA was .253 and his OPS+ was 79. Sharperson batted .300 with 21 doubles, representing the National League's worst team in the All-Star game. Including Eric Young and Juan Samuel, Dodger second basemen complemented Offerman's 42 errors with 32 of their own.

As 1993 approached, the Dodgers were in such a dismal state that just about anyone could represent an improvement. General manager Fred Claire deemed Tim Wallach, 35 years old and coming off a .223, nine-homer season in 150 games in Montreal, a better option at third base than Hansen.

By that token, picking up Reed was a stroke of brilliance. Reed came to the Dodgers in an expansion-draft-day trade with the new Colorado Rockies on November 17, 1992. (The Rockies had drafted Reed from the Red Sox that same day.) Reed's bat was a growing question mark, but when your outfit has made a slovenly 174 errors, a touch of Reed is a respectable accoutrement.

"As You Wish"

All in all, the results weren't bad in 1993. True, the Dodgers started out 8-15 in April, and never got within five games of first place for the rest of the year, landing in fourth, 23 games behind red-hot Atlanta. However, the team showed an 18-game improvement, finishing with a .500 record of 81-81, and had the psychic thrill of eliminating the Giants from playoff contention on the final day of the season with a slam-bang 12-1 victory.

On the mound, Astacio, Candiotti and Ramon Martinez were all above average. Continuing his recovery from arm troubles, Hershiser was slightly below average but better than the year before. Strikeouts from Hershiser and Ramon were dropping, but only Gross (5.22 DERA, or defense-adjusted ERA, per Baseball Prospectus) was already real trouble.

And then, somewhat hidden in a bullpen that featured a gimpy Todd Worrell and future Dodger Stadium quizmaster Jim Gott, there was Ramon's little brother, a 164-pound 21-year-old named Pedro.

Pedro Martinez is the fair maiden of our tragedy. In his rookie season, he went 10-5 with a 2.61 ERA and 199 strikeouts in 107 innings. Because he has the same last name as one 1993 teammate and the same first name as another, it's hard to know whether to refer to him as Pedro or Martinez. Perhaps we would do just as well to call him Buttercup, the sought-after prize of The Princess Bride.

Don't get caught up in gender issues. It's just a device.

Of the 83 games Buttercup pitched in the minor leagues, he started 76 - including all 62 in his last three seasons. His career minor-league ERA was 3.001, including 26 starts at hitters' delight Albuquerque.

In October 1992, Dr. Frank Jobe performed the same surgery on Buttercup as he had on Orel Hershiser 2 1/2 years before. However, Buttercup's operation was on his non-throwing shoulder, and he was healthy all of '93.

For now, the Dodgers had the starting rotation covered, so there was ample time to nurture Buttercup in relief. But for a team on the rise, with Gross, Candiotti and Hershiser all over 33 years old, Buttercup's time would come.

Following the 1993 season, Claire still had greater concerns with his starting lineup. The Dodgers continued to have trouble filling the outfield spots on either side of Butler, who himself slumped to a .284 EQA. Strawberry's Dodger career ended amid what may have been the pinnacle of his erratic behavior. He had 14 hits in his final season with the team. Davis, another seemingly lost cause, had been traded to Detroit on August 31. Cory Snyder was passable, with a .265 EQA, but declining.

And yet, a single season had made a positive difference. Rookie of the Year Mike Piazza was a monster, posting a .317 EQA. Hansen, still only 24, had a .970 OPS and .345 EQA in 105 at-bats. And three prospects were ready to try to solve the problems in the outfield: Billy Ashley, Henry Rodriguez and Raul Mondesi.

It was a confusing time to consider changes to the team. On the one hand, realignment following the 1993 season had created a third division in each league, moving first-place Atlanta and third-place Houston out of the National League West. There was only one team to beat now: the Giants.

On the other hand, that Giant team had gone 103-59 in '93.

And to give one even greater pause, a new Basic Agreement between owners and the players' union had to be negotiated in 1994. Each previous negotiation period had been plagued by a players' strike or owners' lockout - seven in all.

The strikes and lockouts always ended in enough time to finish the season - even in 1981, when 50 days were lost. Still, the 1993 offseason was a risky time to go for broke. With a bright, young core in an uncertain atmosphere, this was very arguably a time to be patient.

All of which made resigning Jody Reed, who had stabilized the Dodger infield in 1993 by making only five errors in 132 games, while also stemming the decline in his own offensive production by posting a .252 EQA, a very reasonable option for Claire.

There were a couple of in-house candidates to replace Reed, but none with the talent of a Mondesi or Piazza. Eddie Pye had batted .329 in Albuquerque, but made 12 errors in 82 games at second base. Rafael Bournigal, a good-fielding shortstop who could have easily made the defensive switch to second, had gone 9 for 18 for the Dodgers in a short trial, but had batted only .277 in Albuquerque.

There were free agents - most notably Robby Thompson, who had a wonderful season with San Francisco, with an EQA of .305. Perhaps there was no better way to make up ground on the Giants than to grab one of their key players. However, as the best second baseman in the National League in 1993 - someone who could field competently to go with his top-notch hitting, Thompson was going to be costly.

Consider the Dodgers' seven other projected regulars besides Reed heading into 1994. Four - Piazza, Karros, Offerman and either Rodriguez or Ashley - were offensive players first. Butler was about even, his ability to catch the ball impacted by his inability to throw it. Up-and-coming Mondesi was a five-tool player, while Tim Wallach, it appeared, was quickly running down to no tools.

On this team, if any kind of a solution could be found at third base, Reed would not need to bat higher than eighth in the order.

The Dodgers made an offer to Reed. Three years, $7.8 million.

Maybe it was too much. Reed would be 34 by the end of the contract - how long would his fielding be good enough to compensate for his hitting? But with few other options available, Reed was a good choice in a rebuilding phase. The Dodgers could afford to be that generous.

"Inconceivable!"

The contract offer was the easy ground ball to Jody Reed. Instead of fielding it, Reed took some time to think about it.

Scott Fletcher, Reed's replacement in Boston, had an WARP (wins over replacement level) of 7.5 and earned $825,000. Mark Lemke, who had a WARP of 6.1 for Atlanta, earned $550,000. Certainly, one could argue these men were underpaid. Just as one could argue that Reed was overpaid in 1993, and about to be overpaid even more.

Instead, Reed took some time to think about it.

Months later, Ross Newhan of the Los Angeles Times tried to determine why Reed hesitated to accept the Dodger offer. Reed's answers do not reconcile easily, if at all.

On the one hand:

Reed said his summer in L.A. was "an absolute pleasure."

"I had my fun and did my job." he said. "The fans were great, the media was great.

"I felt that I not only developed a player-manager respect with Tom Lasorda, but I enjoyed being around him. I also felt the team made big improvement.

"In no way, shape or form was I thinking it wouldn't work out for the future there."

On the other hand:

"People who put money as their top priority will say I was stupid," Reed said. "The same people will say I'm lying when I say that money isn't my top priority.

"There were personal issues I tried to work out with the Dodgers. I had no problem with the offer if it wasn't for those issues. I was uncomfortable with them, but I don't want to get into what they were."

According to these comments, Reed's delay was neither an issue of money nor an issue of happiness. As far as he was concerned, the Dodgers were offering him both. What was it, then?

Was it fear? Unnamed sources told Newhan that "Reed, as the pivot man on double plays, had some concerns for his safety on late feeds from Offerman, but how any of that played into contract talks, if it did at all, is unclear."

Or was it really the money? This is what Claire told Newhan:

"There was nothing of a personal or confidential nature involved," Claire said. "There's nothing complicated or complex about it. What we were offering and they were asking was never close.

"It's that simple. We weren't in the same ballpark."

When you come right down to it, you might find a way to explain how Owen let that game-ending strike three from High Casey go by him in Game 4 of the 1941 World Series, for a passed ball that allowed the Yankees to come back and win. Maybe it was a bad pitch - maybe a spitball. Maybe Casey was the real goat of that story, and maybe Offerman was the real goat of this one.

In the end, the ball was Owen's to block. And the contract was Reed's to sign. And neither did. Reed let it all roll right past him.

And in both cases, the Dodgers came unglued.

"The Fire Swamp"

Meet the new dilemma, same as the old dilemma. Fred Claire had solved his second base problem once, but now he had to do it again. How would he?

According to the Times, Claire checked in with Robby Thompson's agent. Whatever Thompson was demanding from the Dodgers, however, was too much. Thompson resigned with the Giants at $11.625 million for three years (an average of $3.875 million per year), plus a fourth-year option for $3.375 million.

Arguably, Claire could have shot the moon for Thompson, but budgets were different back then. Only five Dodgers - Hershiser, Strawberry, Butler, Candiotti and Wallach - earned more than $3 million per season. The highest-paid player on the Dodgers, Hershiser, earned $4,333,333.

Claire had other options. In fact, he would later choose one of them. He inked a minor-league contract with Jeff Treadway, a second baseman with Cleveland whose presence had been rendered unnecessary by the emergence of Carlos Baerga. Treadway, 30 in 1993, had an inconsistent career at the plate, but was coming off a year where he batted .303 in 97 games with an OPS+ of 102. However, he also made 10 errors, which represented a huge step backward defensively for the Dodgers.

Claire also had the option to wait.

Baseball has rarely had a shortage of owners who would pay a player more than one could fathom. Claire later told Newhan that after Thompson signed with the Giants, "Jody's agent called and said that defined the market." Scary thought.

But it would have been a fairly safe hunch to imagine that no one was going to offer Reed more in the 1993 offseason than the Dodgers did. Theirs was a remarkable offer to begin with.

And if it truly wasn't about the money, then surely, surely Reed would realize that Offermanitis, or whatever was plaguing him, was no reason to turn down the contract of his life.

Time was on Claire's side, not Reed's. But then Claire compounded Reed's mistake.

He got on the phone again.

"I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me!"

In the fall of 1993, Delino DeShields had all the makings of a franchise second baseman. If he wasn't the be-all and end-all, he was at least the be-all.

DeShields reached the majors at the age of 21, and in his first four seasons, from 1990-1993, his on-base percentage never dipped below .347. His worst OPS+ was 94 and he twice reached 116.He also showed improvement in other areas. He stole 42 bases in 1990, but was successful only 65 percent of the time. By 1993, he stole 43 bases, and was safe more than eight times out of 10.

From 1991 to 1993, he reduced his errors from 27 to 18 to 11.

DeShields was no secret. In '93, he finished second in the National League All-Star balloting for second basemen behind Sandberg. DeShields was a good second baseman, apparently on the precipice of greatness at age 24. He was due for a raise from his 1993 salary of $1,537,500, but a raise that would only move him into Reed's salary neighborhood.

For Claire, there was only one issue. DeShields was not a free agent. But with Reed off contemplating the unknowable, DeShields became a temptation, one that Claire was willing to give into - with Buttercup.

Pedro Martinez, the Dodgers' brilliant young pitcher, was trade bait for Claire.

Given the uncertainty of competing in 1994, the urgency to sacrifice Buttercup to fill the second-base position seems unnecessary. But even though no one really wants to think about this now, it's not as if you could not make the case for the trade at the time. The Dodger pitching staff was by no means too good to keep Martinez, but it was still in decent shape for the time being. Meanwhile, second base was vacant.

Additionally, for all his promise, Buttercup was less proven than DeShields. And he was a pitcher - more likely to flame out. Perhaps even more likely than other pitchers.

In 1999, with the Dodgers still haunted by the decision, Newhan talked to Jobe, who operated on Buttercup, about the decision to make the pitcher available.

"I don't think I said get rid of him," Jobe said, talking about the situation for the first time. "I'd never say that, but the circumstances kind of spoke for themselves. His shoulder had come out once, and once an injury of that type occurs, you can't say it won't reoccur. He had kind of a delicate stature to start with and there were already questions about his stamina. It's a judgment call, but you had to kind of wonder, 'Golly, is this kid going to break down?' "

Amid all the uncertainty, Fred Claire could have waited to find out. He should have waited.

Instead, the announcement came on November 19, 1993. Delino DeShields was coming. Pedro Martinez was gone.

Said Claire to the Times: "I mean, we didn't stop trying to sign Jody until we made the trade, but we were never close."

He had given Reed less than a week. Not much time - but plenty for an error can come back to haunt you.

Claire went on to tell the Times: "I have a great deal of respect for Jody Reed. ... He played hard for us and he played well. As far as the negotiations, we had put forth our offer very early, before Jody really declared free agency. If he had said yes to our offer, we would not have traded for a second baseman."

A surprised Reed told the Times that he had no idea the clock was ticking.

"I mean, the only thing I don't understand about the year in L.A. was the thinking of the one guy (Claire), but he makes the calls and I'm not the first to question them. All I know is that I followed the filing rules and suddenly became a villain. What did I do?"

Playing by the rules isn't enough, though. You have to make the right plays. Reed didn't.

"The irony is that the process left us with one of the best young second baseman in baseball, if not the best," Claire said.

Ah, irony.

"Mawage"

Before his first Spring Training game with the Dodgers, DeShields suffered a fractured cheekbone. In April, he missed four games after a collision with Mondesi. In May, a collision with Cubs catcher Rick Wilkins left DeShields with finger injuries that put him on the disabled list for nearly a month.

He played in 89 games, batting .250 with 15 extra base hits. He walked once more than he struck out, but his OPS+ declined from 102 to 85.

Meanwhile, Buttercup became an above-average starting pitcher over the next three seasons. And then, he became perhaps the most dominating pitcher in the game. His career ERA of 2.62 through 2002 is nearly two full runs lower than the league average ERA in that time. He has averaged 10.56 strikeouts per game. In 1,892 1/3 career innings, he has allowed 1.01 baserunners (not counting hit batters) per inning.

In March 1994, Jody Reed settled for one-year, $350,000 deal with Milwaukee, plus incentives, that if he reached them all (which he didn't) would have gotten him a maximum of $1 million.

Reed had three Reed-like seasons - below average hitting with above-average fielding. He retired after spending the 1997 season as a part-timer with Detroit. Over his final three seasons, according to Baseball-Reference.com, he made a total of $2,875,000, or about what he would have made in 1994 alone had he accepted the Dodgers offer.

This tale, of course, is not about whether Jody Reed made enough money to live off of. It is simply about dreadful mistakes that cost the Dodgers.

Jody Reed booted nearly $8 million. Fred Claire booted Pedro Martinez. Both looked around and thought they had a better play to make. You can see the rationalization, so tantalizing. But what blindness. Neither saw that the correct play was right in front of them. And sometimes, all it takes to triumph is to make the simplest of plays.

Friday, October 02, 2009

during an interview at Dodger Stadium. Nimura is also fluent in Spanish

and translates for some Latino players on the team. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Kenji Nimura never dreamed he'd one day work for the team that was an emotional lifeline to him as a boy. Now he translates for pitcher Hiroki Kuroda as well as some Latino players.

By Kurt Streeter; L.A. Times

October 2, 2009

When he heard the snap of a speeding baseball crashing into Hiroki Kuroda's skull, his knees buckled on the dugout steps. Once he recovered, he sprinted to the mound, kneeling near the Dodgers pitcher, who lay in a heap.

"Hiroki, turn over," said the interpreter, a former Spanish teacher named Kenji Nimura who was born in Japan and raised in Los Angeles. For two seasons he has been the pitcher's steady hand, a linguistic link between America and Japan.

"Hiroki, do you feel nauseous?"Nimura asked, carefully translating a trainer's English into Japanese. He saw that the pitcher was dazed. He thought back to the hardest moments in his life and remembered to be calm."Do you feel dizzy?Where did it hit you?Don'tworry; we're going to make sure you are OK."

Kuroda, a key to the Dodgers' playoff hopes, understands little English. If ever he needed help, it was in that tense moment this summer in Arizona, and the uncertain weeks that followed. Nimura was there, beside the pitcher in the ambulance and the hospital. There, days later, for the medical tests that brought comforting news: It was a concussion, serious but survivable. There, during every step of the rehab. There, a month later, for Kuroda's return.

Few outside the team are aware of Nimura. Even ardent fans know next to nothing of the 37-year-old, a studious sort who last played baseball for his high school's junior varsity team. This is as it should be.

"His job requires blending in," says Ned Colletti, the Dodgers general manager. "He's maybe the best at what he does, but not too many people really know what he does. How he cares."

Until he was 11, Nimura lived with his family in a farming town in central Japan. In 1983, his family's import business was struggling and his father began looking for new opportunity.

So it was that Nimura found himself transported with his parents and sister to a small home 15 minutes west of downtown Los Angeles. His English was limited to a clutch of words he'd picked up playing baseball in mowed-down rice paddies back home. The only Japanese kid in a mostly Latino elementary school, he was lonely, scared and so stressed that it was weeks before he could trudge off to school without vomiting.

"There were many painful moments, many times when I was called 'fresh off the boat' by the English speakers," he says. "There was solidarity among them. And the non-English speakers? They were Hispanic. From these guys I first began to really learn another language. It turns out that 'hola, que onda?' [hello, what's up?] -- those were pretty much my first words here."

He was afraid of these Spanish-speaking strangers. They called himhermano. Not knowing that meant "brother," Nimura assumed they hated him, so he decided to hate them back. But slowly, he began to pick up Spanish. He developed a fondness for the language, a bond with those who spoke it. Kids he once feared, many of them outsiders just like he was, became a lifeline.

The Dodgers were a lifeline too. Nimura polished his English listening to Vin Scully. He saw how people from all backgrounds would come together at Chavez Ravine. He closed his eyes and imagined being a Dodger, just like his hero, Steve Sax.

Still, acclimation was no easy road. It would be three years before he left his classes in English as a second language. Five before he could speak English in front of a group.

Six years in, however, Los Angeles had settled in his bones. In his senior year of high school he had friends in every corner: jocks, straight arrows, slackers and surfers, whites and blacks, Asians and Latinos.

Nimura would continue to embrace people and ideas vastly different from his own. At San Jose State, he studied Spanish and cultural anthropology. Then he spent five years in Madrid studying how language and identity mix.

When he returned to Los Angeles, he was married for a short time to a Spaniard. He taught Spanish to working-class students at a junior college, to wealthy ones at a private high school, to L.A.'s Japanese community on cable TV. Everywhere he went, even in his dreams, he casually wove together the three languages he loved.

In 2007, he and his father became fans of the Dodgers' Japanese pitcher, Takashi Saito. "Saito ganbare! Saito ganbare!" they'd chant from the cheap seats. "Saito, let's go! Saito, let's go!"

It never crossed Nimura's mind that he'd end up working with Saito. Before the start of last season, he heard the team was adding a second Japanese player, Kuroda, and that the pitchers needed an interpreter. On a lark, he submitted his resume.

The Dodgers called within a week. It wasn't only that they needed someone who spoke Japanese. They'd been haphazardly relying on coaches and players to translate Spanish. He was hired after his first interview.

"One of the proudest moments of my life," Nimura says. "The Dodgers are not just my favorite team, they're a team with a global reach. The Dodgers represent the things I believe in."

The job took a little getting used to. Nimura would be with the team, and away from his girlfriend, every game, night and day, starting in spring training, ending with the season's last pitch. And he was expected to be invisible. Stick out, add drama, act like a big shot as some big-league interpreters have done? Prepare for a pink slip.

One of the biggest challenges was the American baseball clubhouse, where swearing is common. English obscenities defy translation into Japanese. When translating salty language, Nimura resorted to filling in the blanks with facial expressions, changes in tone, even the use of regional Japanese accents stereotypically thought of as earthy and less refined.

He recalls translating an emotional address last year by former manager Tommy Lasorda, known for soliloquies that could sting the leathered skin of a beat cop.

"You just can't use standard Japanese when Tommy Lasorda is in there getting the guys all pumped up. I had to scramble. I had to use the regional dialect from the area I am from to get across the kinds of things he was saying. I remember when it was over Saito asking me: 'Hey, Kenji, what's going on? Does Lasorda speak Nagoya dialect?' "

This season, Saito pitches for Boston. That means most of Nimura's energy is spent on Kuroda, 34, a player who tends more toward the somber nature of the samurai.

When Kuroda pitches and the game is done, there underneath Dodgers Stadium stands his interpreter -- short, wide-shouldered and utterly inconspicuous in his wire-rimmed glasses, crisp blue polo and pleated khakis.

Reporters swarm. Questions fly.

"Kyou wa choushi ga yoku nakatta desu," Kuroda says in Japanese.

"I had a bad game," Nimura says in English.

"An lucky datta desune," Kuroda says.

"I wasn't lucky today," Nimura says.

It goes like this for nearly 10 minutes, the interpreter speaking in the first person to reporters as if he were the pitcher, smiling slightly when Kuroda smiles, frowning slightly when Kuroda frowns.

It helps Nimura that many baseball terms used in Japan were borrowed from America. Baseball, for example, isbesuboru.

But the languages, and the cultures, differ in ways that present a firm test. It's not only the myriad differences in grammar. It's that in Japan, communication is deeply influenced by the relationship between speakers, by social status, by the context in which a conversation occurs. Kuroda can say "yes" but actually mean "no" -- leaving his interpreter to divine the meaning from hair-thin clues.

The two are near-constant companions. At the ballpark, Nimura shadows Kuroda everywhere but on the mound during games. On road trips, they regularly dine together. Nimura relates to the pitcher with an arm's-length formality he refers to as a "Buddhist-influenced" show of respect: for Kuroda's culture, his stolid nature and his decade of superb play in Japan.

Early in their relationship, it was not uncommon for them to spend an entire day working together at Dodger Stadium, then part ways with nothing more than a stiff businesslike nod.

It's often different with the team's Latino players, who are outwardly warmer and looser. Nimura's help ranges from interpreting for the few who speak primarily Spanish to simply being a confidant and friend.

"With them," he says, without a trace of irony, "I feel the solidarity of being Latin."

Recently, in the team's cramped clubhouse, Manny Ramirez passed balls around for everyone on the team to sign.

He handed a ball, along with his pen, to the interpreter.

"Kenji," he said. "Here, we need your signature."

"I'm not a player," Nimura quickly responded.

"Kenji," Ramirez said. "Sign it. You are a part of us."

Nimura has a favorite saying. "Make the exotic familiar," he intones, "and the familiar exotic."

"I want to know the deeper way that things work. It might sound silly, but I want to be truly cross-cultural. To connect, with open mind and open heart."

On that mid-August night in Arizona, this happened in a most meaningful way.

After an anguished ambulance ride, Kuroda lay on a bed in a small room at St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix. He woke every half hour, foggy and fearful. But each time he focused, his eyes fell on the interpreter calmly propped on a cot a few feet away.

That night, Nimura was more than an arm's-length interpreter.

In Japanese, he'd become akyodai.

In Spanish, anhermano.

In English, a brother.

"If you try hard enough, you can reach where words can't reach," Nimura says. "It's something I picked up growing up the way I did: You can have understanding, even without words. It's what I live for."

Thursday, October 01, 2009

The Glory Days: New York Baseball, 1947 — 1957 is a virtual exhibition that explores how and why New York City came to dominate Major League baseball and how 11 extraordinary seasons shaped today's game. It is based on an exhibition on view at the Museum of the City of New York from June 27 to December 31, 2007 that used baseball as a lens through which to examine city life in the post World War II years.